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Recently Simon asked:
So I signed up for Twitter. Someone wanna tell me what it’s good for?

What Is Twitter?

Twitter is a combination of a social network and what has become known as micro-blogging. It allows you to send 140 character text based messages at a time. These messages can be received by those who “follow” you either via the web, third party applications, or via an SMS message to your mobile device.

What Is Twitter Used For?

Twitter, like most of the other “web 2.0″ apps out there, is for the dissemination of information. What differentiates Twitter is its character limit, its ability to send these to mobile devices, and its near immediate recognition from those who have chosen to follow the updates of the user sending the information.

Twitter has been used by:

• The Los Angeles Fire Department to send updates on situations within the city, such as active fires
• Barack Obama uses it to update where he is on the campaign trail and who his Vice-Presidential pick is
• NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab uses it to show off some very cool pictures
• Comcast uses it to provide updates to customers and to monitor where their customers may have a problem with their service
• Personal Blogger uses it for pretty much whatever pops to mind and earth shattering blog posts

What Do I Do With Twitter?

At first you may think, “No one is going to care if I am mowing the lawn!“, but how will you know unless you ask? Of course doing so, as a personal blogger, will require a blog post. Then there is the waiting for the answers which may or may not come as quickly as you like. Now if you had Twitter and was able to Tweet about your new blog post, then perhaps your answer would have come faster.

While you may look at Twitter and not immediately understand how it can relate to you as a personal blogger, one of the aspects that is often overlooked is its social networking component. By becoming a Twitter user, and then “following” your friends, you will be able to perhaps learn more about them than you originally knew, they in turn can learn more about you and that bond between each other will grow a little stronger.

As outlined previously government agencies, presidential candidates, and service providing companies have all found uses for Twitter. What you use Twitter for ultimately is up to you, but I strongly recommend seeing what others use it for as a catalyst for how you integrate it into your life.

Recommended Twitter Applications And Plugins

There are a number of third part applications that can integrate Twitter into your daily routine thanks to a robust API. Here is a brief list of applications that I have tried out that can make your Twitter experience better:

• Twhirl - running on Adobe Air, Twhirl provides a nice small desktop client to receive updates as they happen. Recommended when following less than 50 Tweeters
• Tweetdeck - another application that runs on Adobe Air, Tweetdeck provides the full screen Twitter experience to receive updates as they happen. Recommended when following greater than 50 Tweeters for its ability to divide them into groups
• TwitterFox - A browser based Twitter client for the FireFox web browser. Recommended when running Adobe Air isn’t a possibility
• Twitter Tools - A fantastic all-in-one plugin for WordPress bloggers
• TwitPic - Thinking outside of the box, TwitPic is a web based app allows you to post photos to Twitter from your cellphone or through their site.

Twitter recently announced on their blog that they have been forced to make some changes to their service in regards to SMS delivery to mobile devices in international markets. Due to costs without a monetization component, SMS deliver outside of the United States of America, Canada, and India has ceased with no restart date in sight.

Video Credit: Twitter In Plain English produced by Commoncraft

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